With China’s rapid economic progress and steady increase in its international
influence, China has gradually embarked on the soft power idea and has made
developing its soft power as its national strategy. We argue that China’s soft
power strategy is in accordance to Chinese Confucian culture and political value
and fits well with its grand strategy of peaceful rise. Based on existing
conceptualizations of soft power, we expanded the sources of soft power to six
pillars: cultural attractiveness, political values, development model, international
institutions, international image, and economic temptation. We also identified
three channels for wielding soft power: formal, economic, and cultural
diplomacies. Putting all the basics together, we present an integrative model of
soft power. Accordingly, we analyze the sources and limits of China’s soft
power and suggest how to improve it.

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The crane has been an ancient symbol of longevity in China carrying with it intimation of distinctive principles of ancient China; harmony, patience and graceful coexistence with nature. It is ironic that the construction crane is the new symbol of a changing land, where old hutong neighborhoods are disappearing as fast as the bird and its habitat. Is this new crane helping to create a harmonious society, as the HuWen administration would have you believe? The economic boom fueled in large part by the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games brings with it many new construction jobs, labour issues and in some cases new forms of corruption. Does this development reinforce solidarity and good working conditions in a country where unions are largely controlled by the government? Or do business networks, guanxi, continue to dominate business relationships and hamper the achievement of good working conditions? These questions will be examined, including issues such as corruption, safety and working conditions. Comparisons to labour issues in the United States will be included.

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We argue, due to the conspicuous failure of Washington Consensus-guided
reforms in most part of the developing world in 1990s and the outbreak of the
current global financial crisis, Washington Consensus, as a general term of the
neoliberal free market economic thinking, has been withering. In the meantime,
Chinese economic model has gain wide recognition and praise worldwide.
Joshua C. Ramo coined the term of Beijing Consensus as an alternative
approach to economic development for developing nations. There has been hot
debate on the notion of Beijing Consensus. We argue even though there are
some problems in Ramo’s original definition of Beijing Consensus, we should
not reject this notion altogether. Instead, we should try to come up with better
conceptualizations of this term. In this paper, we sum up ten general principles
of the Chinese development model as our new definition of the Beijing
Consensus.

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China’s diplomacy is among the many accomplishments of China during the period of reform and opening up. The People’s Republic of China is emerging fully on to the world’s stage, and in a largely positive fashion. It now has both interests and a presence in parts of the world completely new to China—such as Latin America and the Middle East. Beijing has managed its relations well with the major world powers—United States, Russia, and the European Union. It has transformed its regional diplomacy in Asia, reasserted a role in Africa, and has become more active in multilateral organizations. Thirty years ago, at the outset of the “reform and opening” era, China acted hesitantly on the world stage, limiting itself largely to its united front tactics against Soviet “social imperialism.” Its diplomats were not very sophisticated and rarely left their embassies abroad. In the United Nations, China’s preferred medium of voting was to abstain (especially on sensitive issues). In short, China’s diplomacy was hesitant and not confident, inward-looking not outward looking, parochial and not sophisticated, reactive not proactive, and composed more of words than deeds. Today, these latter characterizations better describe China’s diplomacy.

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The role of equity in the transition from egalitarianism to capitalism

Rutten, Koen(Frederiksberg, 2010)

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Resume:

The ‘Scientific Development Concept’, promulgated by Hu Jintao in 2007 articulated the increased eminence of social development in official ideology. The shift from political and economic objectives towards social factors can be explained by growing concerns over the current negative externalities of China’s economic growth, the long and midterm sustainability of its economic development model and the implications thereof for social stability and political legitimacy. An immediate priority has been to formulate and implement a response to mitigate the disruptive effects of the transition to a market economy. Such a response must cover a wide array of social issues, ranging from provision of health, education and infrastructure, pension to unemployment insurance and poverty alleviation. The welfare issue is characterized by high degrees of complexity and interdependency between endogenous factors and exogenous political and economic variables. Improvements are further confounded by the high decentralization of administration, regional disparities and the sheer size of operations. Although progress has been made on most fronts, it remains to be seen whether recent initiatives will prove sufficient to meet China’s social challenges. In this paper, I provide a summary of the academic literature on post-reform development of the welfare system. I will give an overview of its most salient problems, initiatives and their preliminary outcomes. Finally, I will present some concluding remarks and provide suggestions for future research.

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This study aims to put forward a new concept in charismatic leadership
theory: source of leader charisma (SLC). Using an inductive approach, we
identified the various dimensions of SLC in the Chinese context, and found that
SLC comprises of charismatic personality and charismatic behaviors.
Charismatic personality consists of three dimensions: high morality, outstanding
talents, and attractive characteristics. Charismatic behavior also includes three
dimensions: visional inspiration, character development, and morale stimulation.
Finally, we developed a primary model to explore the mechanism by which the
SLCs are attributed to charisma by follower. Our findings in the present study
contribute to new evidence that charismatic leadership theory may transcend
cultural boundaries.